All right, I'm showing 1:00 here, so let's get started with our next fireside chat. Home BancShares, $23 billion asset bank, Conway, Arkansas. Home BancShares boasts one of the strongest ROAs in the industry. It's been above a 2% ROA all of 2025. I think peers are around a 1.20% ROA, so almost twice peer levels. Home BancShares has also been one of the most prolific acquirers in the industry since its IPO 19 years ago. I'm sure we'll talk more about M&A in a few minutes. I guess Chairman, President, CEO, John W. Allison, appreciate you being here. Any opening remarks you want to make? At the top, we'll dig into all the good stuff, but what's on your mind to start with today?
You're going to ask questions about it. M&A is on my mind more than anything else, and I have my strong opinions. As you know, I tell it like I see it. I have some strong opinions on M&A and what's going on in the bank space.
Let's start here on, before M&A, what did we start on? Just loan demand, sentiment of borrowers that's out there. How would you describe just overall borrower sentiment at this stage?
I'd describe it as good. Ours is good. Will we end up the quarter? I never project loan growth because every time I project loan growth, we lose. We have a shortage of loan growth, or it goes negative. We're up $300 million so far this quarter, which is pretty strong for us. We don't give our loans away, as you well know, and we maintain our margins on those. It's been pretty good. A lot of our big customers are coming in and doing projects. One of my big Orlando customers came in, oh, a year ago, and he said, "I got five projects. Only one of them works." From there, he's done fired up. He did the one, and he's started two more. That's a good sign for us. We got some good stuff going on.
Florida, I mean, you just know Florida's Florida, right? Florida's booming. It's just continuing to grow and go. We're pretty happy with our presence there and would expand if we get an opportunity.
What about CCFG up in New York, Chris Poulton's group? They've seen more paydowns and payoffs, I think, so far this year. What's the update status of that?
Chris could have ended up having a pretty good fourth quarter here. Things have been pretty good for him. You know, Chris runs his own shop for us, basically, and he calls the strikes and the balls. If he wants to do it, he'll do it. If he doesn't see what he likes in the marketplace, he won't do it. We don't push him. We give him a quota to do that, but it looks like he's hanging in pretty good. He didn't get all the payoffs the second quarter he thought he'd get, and I'm not sure where those are going into the fourth quarter.
Traditionally, the bands you put around CCFG was between 10% and 15% of overall assets.
That's correct.
I think we're at the lower end of that now. If he sees opportunity, it sounds like he could take it.
That's right. He could. He could take it. There are some interesting opportunities out there that he's looking at right now. I think he booked one just recently, $180 million, I think he booked. Good loan, good company, and we're proud to be associated with them. He has a lot of stuff going on. There is a lot of stuff going on throughout the whole footprint right now.
What about within the boat lending segment, SPG? What's new with the boat lending?
What's new in the boat lending is that it's had turned up. But we got more past dues in the marine space than we got anywhere. We're running about a 1% past due in the marine space, maybe a little over that. If y'all remember, I've talked about this one yacht for a long time. It's half of our past dues, and we arrested it at the boat show last year in Fort Lauderdale. We still haven't got resolution through the courts. But the guy doesn't have the boat. We got the boat. The sheriff's got the boat. And we got about $10 million worth of past dues, and this one boat is about a $5 million ticket. And it is well worth the money. The guy's a $9.5 million boat, $5 million balance on it. Eventually, we'll get it back and get it gone.
He keeps going to court pleading that, "Oh, there's equity in this boat, and this ought to happen that. I've got money coming." Anyway, I don't know the story of that. I'll be glad we get it back because it'll be an easy sale. We'll get it gone. That'll cut their past dues in half. That one guy that was a fraudulent loan, one guy committed suicide. Just some of these you get tired of one-off stories, but they're actually one-off, so.
Where are we within Texas? You acquired there a few years ago. It's been a cleanup process, clean up some of their loans. It feels like now we've gotten through the worst of it, but there's still a few more. Where are we in Texas cleanup right now?
We've got our arms around it. Does that mean we've had all the loss we're going to have? I think so. The big credit down there that we've had is still struggling. However, it may be sold. There's a good possibility that that is going to be sold and could be resolved by the end of the year. Bids are due Friday on the project. If it gets, we've got two bids so far, and they're current, by the way. We should have five or six more bids on that. It's a money-making operation when it's good. When they shut the bridge on them, they can't ship into Mexico. That's what they transport fuel into Mexico. Two years ago, they made or four years ago, they made $25 million.
The next year, made 30, and then they lose 5, and then they lose 20 when they shut the bridge on them. Anyway, they brought in a big company to sell it, like a Stephens, and they've got lots of interest. I mean, it's a reasonable deal, and it's something that I would invest in as a businessman. That's kind of how I look at loans like that. Would I invest in that? I would have invested in it. I didn't know I missed the geopolitical nature of that deal. I mean, hopefully, it'll be gone. The good news is it's probably going to be gone by the end of the year. The bad news is that I'm going to miss the interest income on it.
Yeah. Plenty of some older loans. What about any new bad loan formation? Are you seeing any credits, any downgrades? They're material. Just.
Oh, the regulator's trying to downgrade a credit right now that just is infuriating. We don't want to downgrade that credit. It's a longtime customer, great customer. They want to downgrade it. Not to loss, but just downgrade it. Anyway, other than that, it's really pretty good. I mean, the business is pretty good. You get a few spotted deals. Whatever we had was Texas, right? I don't mean that disrespectful. It just is what it is. The quality of that loan book was not the quality of Home BancShares' standards. We don't have anything in Texas. We don't have anything in Arkansas to speak of. It's just a Texas credit. We got our arms around it. I mean, we know where we're standing with that credit and all those credits out there.
I'll pause there. See if there's any questions from the audience on credit. On the margin, Home BancShares' margin's over 4.5%. The highest it's been in several years. I think peers are called 3–3.5%. For those that are newer to the Home BancShares story, kind of what's the secret sauce? How do you get margin well above peer levels?
We did not invest in long-term securities. We just did not do that. We sat on the cash. You remember that. We sat on the cash. We put it in Fed funds. We did not involve ourselves in long-term securities. As a result of that, we did not have the low-rate loans on the books. People were chasing yield, if you remember that. They were putting money out 10, 15, 20 years, 25 years, some 30-year stuff. They were putting out. We did not do that. Call it what you want to call it. It was the best business decision of my career not to put money into securities and low-rate long-term loans.
We just sat on the cash and rode this thing all the way through and went from 40 basis points to 80– 100– 5– 6– 7, which gave us an opportunity to pick off stuff that comes out, good high-yielding stuff. We bought some sub-debt for some people that it's five-year stuff. We stretched a little bit going out five years. It is good yield and sub-debt that is marketable. We maintain that margin, and we do not give our loans away. We do not run CD ads. From the liability side, we run strength. There is no accident. We do not run CD ads where you see people running 5%–5.5% CD ads. We do not do that. Our cost of funds is we have a low cost of funds. We get a high yield on the loans. We make a great margin.
That's really it. We didn't get caught with we got about $200 million AOCI stuff, which is nothing compared to what the world has out there. That was stuff that we had on the books prior to the crash hitting here. We thought that Volcker from Volcker of the late 1970s into the 1980s back years ago, we thought that it was repeating. History was repeating itself, and that's exactly what happened. We called that shot, and it was a great shot for us. Nothing's changed really with us. We're just running the way we run, and we're just humming. I think I said that last year. We're humming. When you see the P&L statements, you look at them, and they just get better and better and better, which is pretty encouraging to me. Our people are producing tremendous ROAs.
With the Fed recently cutting September and I guess in October and maybe more Fed cuts, you've been lowering your deposit costs. Just talk to any success you've had lowering those deposit costs and how much pushback you're getting from customers lowering deposit costs.
We dropped immediately last time on the Fed funds, and we got a little pushback on that. If you remember, we took customer to customer on the way up to negotiate with them. We're taking customer to customer on the way down as we negotiate with them. Some of them have said, "If you don't put the rates back where we're going to leave," and you hear that stuff. You got to go see them, buy them dinner, maybe a whiskey, and usually work that out.
Margin 4.5%. Just talk to the ability to kind of maintain these peak levels that we haven't seen before. Can we maintain 4.5%? Are we going to see some pressure on that eventually?
I think we're going to see some slight compression is what I think. Not serious compression. We're going to see some slight compression. That's what I would look for.
If the Fed cut more from here, would that accelerate the margin compression to next year?
I guess according to the model, it will. We react pretty quick. We've been through this. We've seen this circuits before. We've been up and we've been down. We maintained in the last cycle pretty good. I think we'll maintain that. One thing, Stephen Tipton, our new CEO, he really is on top of this. I mean, he monitors it every day. He stays in tune with it. He's controlling the expense side, and you got Kevin Hester controlling the loan rate side on the other side. They work hand in hand together to keep improving the margin in most instances.
Yeah. The other part of the Home BancShares story that's unique is just on the expense side. Efficiency is a core competency at Home BancShares. A lot of your peers talk about becoming more efficient but struggle to get there. What is it that Home BancShares does that peers do not do that allows you to be much more efficient?
I give Donna Townsend credit for the efficiency. As you know, she's the lady that took us from 62% to sub-40% efficiency ratio. That became a way of life, and it is an everyday affair in our company. When our regional presidents, all 16 regions, report upstream, they report just like I report to you: ROAs, ROEs, efficiency ratios, same way, which the mentality of the guys that run the company for us in the field see the same things you see and we see, and they understand that. I think it's made better bankers out of them. It's made better bankers out of us. I think being a public company, you kind of get the idea of what people expect in the marketplace, and you try to perform to that level. We do perform at a high level.
All of these, you do not have to hold these guys' hands. Just tell them they know the parameters. They understand that they report their efficiency ratio. It is like 16 different banks reporting upstream. It gives them the mentality that we have in the company. If they got a high efficiency ratio for a month, it might have been a one-time event, they explain that. They know the game. You do not have to hold their hands. They understand what they are doing. They understand what we expect. They are all vested in the stock. It is really everybody holding hands, pulling together. Once you get them there, they understand it. You just keep them there. That is what I say humming. It is humming. We got the margin. We got the rate. We got loans growing. We got cost of funds coming down a tick.
It's all good for Home right now.
If you look at efficiency by state, Arkansas is humming because it's been there a long time. Florida. Texas is one of your newer markets. Is Texas as efficient as the other state? Is it where it needs to get to?
Almost. Almost. Almost as efficient. Yeah. You'd think Florida would be higher as expensive as it is to operate in that area, but it's extremely efficient. You think about this. Not only did we move into Florida and buy failed banks, but we turned them into 2% ROA banks too. I mean, our track record is established that we have the ability to fix banks. We have announced a LOI. We are in the middle of that LOI. We are doing due diligence on that as we speak. These people have good people. They just got themselves an AOCI problem. We are going to mark the balance sheet. We have the capital to go mark the balance sheet and fix it, and it will come out running good. They are in good markets, and we are looking forward to announcing that sometime in December.
You disclosed the LOI. It sounds like that's continuing to progress forward. How would you just characterize M&A overall in your region? How active are some of the discussions that you've been involved in?
They're active. I mean, they're extremely active. The problem is that we're running off our shareholder base. We get the generalists back in, and then somebody says there's cockroaches and all the generalists run out. We play this yo-yo game with our stock prices. They drive the stock prices down. I look at it, and I think Home just reported the best earnings maybe that's been reported in years, and not just of all banks. It's frustrating to me to watch it. We trade with the rest of the group, right? We haven't separated ourselves except from price. We trade about two times tangible book, which gives us an advantage in there. I'm concerned about the generalists. I'm concerned about the dilution of tangible book. I think they're abandoning us.
I had an analyst who was sitting with Donna and I at the last session, a big company. Works for a big company. She said, "I can't get I show my PMs your bank. You can't get them to buy banks." She said, "No bank." They have no interest in banks. I think we've done that to ourselves through these silly deals and non-poor performance by different banks. We've had a lost decade. We had a lost decade of stocks that are you can go back 10 years or 15 years. Nothing's changed for them except they've gotten bigger, and the CEO's got a bigger salary, and the investment bankers all got paid. What about the shareholders? What happens to our shareholders? Who's taking care of our shareholders? It's frustrating to a guy like me that runs the kind of company we run.
What is four-year earned back to tangible book? I guess I'm a long voice out here. What does that mean? That means it's four years till I get back to where I am today. In the meantime, you're going to do one next year, and that's four-year earned back. In the meantime, you're going to do one year after next. That's four-year earned back. When does a poor shareholder ever get his head stuck up? I think we're a victim of our own greed in lots of respects by doing these trades that don't make any sense and dilute the shareholders. We got to quit diluting the shareholders. We got to get to the point where we're rewarding our shareholders. That's my new pitch. I guess you've seen this company, this activist company out here, WhaleCo. You saw what happened with what was it?
Comerica and Fifth Third. And both shareholders won. The Comerica shareholders got $11 a share more, and Fifth Third stock went up. The deal worked. It was a non-diluted deal, and it worked for both sides, and everybody got a good trade. Now you got WhaleCo out here running as an activist. That is right, wrong, or indifferent. Last week, Donna and I flew to meet WhaleCo. I want to hear, I want to meet them. I want to talk to them. I want to see what they're doing. I think you're going to see them more active in the market. These lost decade banks, I think they're going to get a hot shot in the butt. I think somebody's fixed to come after them and do something. I think they need it.
I think it's good for all of us to do better in the future. I mean, we work for the shareholders. Why did I deserve more money than I got last year? Only if I perform better would be my call. I'm a long voice right now, and it probably won't go anywhere, but I think it should go somewhere. I think the fact that we dilute, dilute, dilute, and do stupid stuff and I get it, reposition a balance sheet. I mean, you think about it, and you lose 25% or 20% of the total tangible common equity in a bank that's been built since 1900, and you lose 21% of the tangible common equity, that's a train wreck. That's a massive train wreck. It is just a silliness.
It shows you the stupidity of people running these banks, how they got them in trouble, and the things they did over the years. Not that we're geniuses because we're not. I graduated with a 2.00001. If I hadn't had the physical science test, my fraternity hadn't had it, I'd still be there trying to get over a 2 point. Common sense tells you what to do. So far, so good for us. I'm sure we'll blow something up someday, but we hadn't so far.
I think you're right. I think the shareholder activism will bring more accountability to the boards at the banks that has been lacking to a certain degree over the last several years.
It's a good thing. These guys, I mean, we spent three and a half, four hours with them, had drinks and dinner, and they're just business guys. They said, "So you got lots of targets. You got lots of opportunities out there to help shareholders in the marketplace." Or somebody like me. I said, "If you get on one that we're sitting on in our area somewhere," I said, "we'll be your buyer." We can be not colluding with them, but we can be their buyer. We are open to whatever comes. I learned something in that three-hour dinner or four-hour dinner. I learned some stuff from those guys, which is good. We all learned. They said they never had a CEO come fly to see them. How can they pick on us with our numbers, right?
Yeah. All your M&A deals have been triple accretive in the past. That is something you've held to a high standard. At this point, as you look around, especially with the AOCI challenges, is triple accretive still a reasonable goal to have?
Absolutely. You'll see this deal. If we can complete this deal, it will be accretive to book, accretive to tangible book, and accretive to EPS day one, not four years from now, day one. The day we sign the deal, it'll be accretive to EPS. The price is agreed upon unless we find something somewhere. It is a triple A deal. If you see us announce a deal to be done, it is triple A. I feel good about that. We are on another one that was triple A also. We did not get it. Anyway, we continue to hold those standards. He was trying to push me past accretive on the book value. He is a good operator himself. I said, "Let me ask you something.
In about a year, when you're sitting here beside me and we're looking at another deal, are you going to want to be diluted?" He said, "No. I get your point." It is non-diluted. As it stands today, it's accreted, accreted, accreted. I've already seen the headline. He said, "Home enters so and so with triple accreted deal.
Yeah. In the industry, we're seeing pretty fast closings in some of these bank deals from announcement to actual closing. Some acquirers are getting more comfortable with announcing two deals, having two applications at once with the regulators. Where's your comfort level as far as M&A and stacking deals on one another?
I'd do another one. I mean, I'd do another one. I normally don't do the one I'm doing is not huge, but it's a good size. I don't think we're going to run into, or at least we haven't run into any asset quality problems as of yet in due diligence. Excuse me. Would I stack another one on? Yeah, I'd stack another one on because this was, I mean, it's a few billion. We can do this, I think, pretty quick and move on to the next deal. I'd do another one right now if we get something that makes sense.
As far as markets, are you still focused on the same state that you're in, or would you be open to market expansion from where you're at right now?
I would rather do another Texas deal or another Florida deal. The scarcity in Florida, there is just not much left there that could be bought to where it would not be diluted to me. I mean, I could do a trade there, maybe slightly diluted. The problem is when you break your word, we have held this for 26 years since y'all took us public. We have held the non-dilutiveness of the company. People push you, "Well, you are not growing fast enough." I am growing fast enough in the deals that I can do, right? Premeditated growth. We are growing fast enough, and we are maintaining a fortress balance sheet as we are growing. We take what they give us. We do not force loans. We do not force deals to happen. We let happen. Chris Bolton, I mean, whatever Chris Bolton, he can go up to he could go up to what?
$3.1 billion. And he's running about $2 billion now. He's got a runway of that. But we'll shut him down at 15% of assets. But that's his call, right? He's a good enough lender, and we trust him enough that we let him run with that. And could he tilt it up and get a bigger bonus for everybody? He could. But as he says, he said, "The year of the salesman is followed by the year of the collector." So.
I'll pause there if there's any follow-ups on M&A. John, what about the regulatory environment? Obviously, on the M&A application process, we've seen that ease quite a bit. Have you had any exams and any sense you're getting as far as the regulatory environment changing?
I think it's favorable to the people I talk to. I think it's favorable. I think it's our turn. I mean, we got to move. We're going to do M&A and do it properly. We got to move here. We got what? 36 months maybe while Trump's in left. You can just feel the difference with the regulators. You just feel it. It just feels different than what it used to feel like. The Happy Bancshares deal took us, I don't know, hell a year and a half or something to get that deal closed. Crazy, crazy stuff. Everybody's getting them done a little quicker now. I think that's really good. It speeds everything up. While you could come back, you can come back with a second deal behind that if you find something that makes some sense.
As far as your excess capital, how do you think about how much excess capital you have? Do you have certain thresholds you try to operate by? You have a stock repurchase authorization that you can dabble in. You bought back some other debt in the past. You pay down some debt. How do you kind of think about how much capital you have to play with on the M&A?
Oh, I like capital. We run in 14% tangible common equity. But think about it. We're running a 18-19% return on the 14%. We're running big numbers there. So I like lots of capital. I think it's important to maintain lots of capital. We've been through a pandemic. We've been through a recession. We've been through high and low interest rates. And it just pays for the protection of your company to maintain strength on the balance sheet. So it's not like we book $300 million worth of loans. We book them at 7.5% or 8%. That's like most people booking $400 million worth of loans because we get a lot more out of that. And the efficiency ratio allows us to be more profitable on those loans than other people are. So I think that's an important factor in the company.
Even though we have a lot of capital, we generate lots of capital. I was speaking at one of your conferences a while back, and I said, "Think about talking to the bankers." I said, "Think about all you guys. We go to work about the same time, 7:38, and we get off about 5:00 P.M." I said, "We spend all day at the bank if you do not go play golf." I said, "I do not play golf. You think about that. I am running a 2% ROA, and you are running a 1. What does that give me? It gives me twice as much available income to pull the capital handles as you have." I said, "I can build capital. I can grow capital and grow tangible common equity. I can buy back stock. I can pay the dividend.
I can maintain continued growth and strength in my company while I do that. I said, "It's really ridiculous if you think about it. If you're running a 0.8 or 0.9, you can stand on your head and run that. You really need to go buy something. You dilute yourself again. Think about it. Fix what you got first. Get your bank fixed. Get somebody like a Donna Townsend. Get your efficiency ratio up to 2%. You can go buy and do banks, and you can be successful in what you're doing. You feel good about it. You feel good about buying back stock. You feel good about increasing the dividend. You feel good about building capital." You can pull every one of those capital handles.
I mean, you think about the amount of money that Home BancShares generates in a year's time. It's a $400 million-plus, closer to $500 million this year it's going to be. And we just stack it up. We just stack it up on the balance sheet. There'll be something come by sometime. We thought when all the banks went broke, we talked about it last year. The Fed said, "We're going to need y'all." We lined up, and we're ready to go buy a bunch of failed banks and troubled financial institutes. As it turned out, they backed up the loan truck. But we're going to remain prepared. So when people start looking for a place to hide in financials, they can come to Home. They're going to get their dividend. We'll cycle with probably the rest of them.
We shouldn't cycle with the rest of them because we make the kind of money we make. It is what it is. If you run a good bank, you should be rewarded for it. In life, everybody trades. They kind of trade in that cycle. We have pulled out. Other times, we've pulled out to separate ourselves. Our goal has been trying to separate ourselves from the pack because average ROA is what? 1.2? Is that it?
Yep.
Think about it. I ran a 2.17 last quarter. I ran a 2.33 last month. I mean, these numbers are just phenomenal numbers. I can't ask my people for any more than that. That is why we got to go buy some assets. We have got this one deal going. I think you will be happy with the market. I think I am happy with the market. I am happy with the guy. He knows his stuff. When you sit down with a CEO, the founder of a company, and he starts going through his financials, and he does not have to get his phone out. He does not have to look at a note. He knows the numbers on the tip of his tongue. That is pretty impressive to me. This guy knows this has been his baby.
We will be glad to have him, look forward to him working with us and going forward and building his market on out. He has some good opportunities to build a market out. This will not be our last one with him. We will let him lead that market with Home BancShares' balance sheets. We will be involved in it. Of course, Stephen and Kevin Hester and myself will be involved, and Brian Davis and Donna. We look forward to this opportunity. I think you will find it. I think you will find it as a plus. I mean, the headline looks just the headline. I have just seen it. I have seen a couple of headlines. Home completes. Home announces. Triple accretive acquisition. Another triple accretive acquisition, which separates us from the world, right?
Look forward to seeing that. Absolutely. As far as just Home BancShares' M&A targets, if you go back a year ago, they were all banks that were suffering from AOCI losses and needed some help on the capital front. Roll forward to today. Is that still the issue? Are there any other challenges some of these more M&A targets are facing at this point? Is it still on the AOCI side?
Oh, we can fix pretty much. We can good bank, bad bank, the asset quality. We probably got surprised on the Happy deal much more than we ever anticipated getting. That's just the way they operate in Texas. It's an 80/20 state. It's 20% down, and they finance 80. In this inflationary environment, all this craziness that's gone on the last several years, you lose that 20%. You're really 100% in the deal. When you get into some of these loans, you got to work your way out of them. We like to have more equity than that in our deals in most of our markets. I forgot what your question was. What was the question?
AOCI, other opportunities besides that? Or is that the prime one?
That is probably the prime one right now for these. What do you do, right? If you got yourself in trouble on AOCI, you restructure your balance sheet and destroy your tangible common equity, or you just grind it out. In the last conference call, I said, "When you restructure your balance sheet to the extent some of these people are doing, it's like losing Park Place in Monopoly. You never get it back. Once it's gone, you're never going to get Park Place back. It's gone. Somebody's got it, and they're going to hold on to it forever." That is what happens. Meantime, guys like us are stacking up capital over here while these guys are grinding out the long-term effects of their stupid decisions. We're building a war chest, continue to build a war chest of capital on the other side. You can't ever make that up.
I mean, when you lose, when you do those things, it is a major loss, and there is no making it up. You can't get it back. It's just gone forever. Someone said, "Ask a guy who's in AOCI, 'Johnny, what do I do?'" I said, "You grind it out." He said, "I'm missing years of good income." I said, "I get it. I understand that. There's nothing you do. When you made those decisions, you got to live with those decisions till the maturity of that bond comes up or things improve or rates come down to where you can take a hit and move on." It is a tough deal. It really is a tough deal. You just can't, when you think about restructuring a bond book and losing $500,000, it's gone, right? It's gone forever. Gone forever.
Thank goodness we didn't do that.
Yeah. Absolutely. I guess just lastly for me, and we can end it here, Florida. Florida's been one of your strongest markets for a while. You mentioned before there's just not that many opportunities to acquire in Florida, limited number of banks. Kind of what's next in Florida for Home BancShares?
We're just going to continue to grow in that market. We like the Florida market a lot. As we continue, we have customers recommending us to other customers. That really has become, that's kind of become a big deal with our company. We've got four or five big customers that we've helped, and they've helped us. We've worked hand in hand, and they've become rich, rich, rich, good. Our stock's performed as a result of that, and they've been good supporters. That's kind of how we operate the thing. Hopefully, that'll continue in the future.
Any other closing remarks you want to make? Any other thoughts on your mind before we end?
No. The only comment I have is I don't want us to lose our shareholders. We used to trade at book value. I sold my last bank at 4.11x book value. That put Home BancShares today at about close to $90. You think about that. Now we're trading on tangible book value. The goodwill's gone away, and we're trading on tangible book. And then we dilute tangible book. Just the word, we're shooting ourselves in the foot and then in the knee and then in the hip. We keep injuring our own selves in the bank space by, I mean, if a bank's trading at 1.4x tangible book and he pays 2x tangible book for somebody, what is that? What do you call that? Dilution, right? And who tracks them down the road?
Guys say, "That was throw your arm back to tangible book." I said, "Did you track it? Did anybody track it? Does anybody track it?" I said, "That's BS, right? It's just pure BS." I am adamant you're going to hear more of that out of me in the future is the attitude on M&A. How do you plan to fix if you're one six ROA and you're paying two? How do you plan to fix that? I mean, that's not smart. Get your bank fixed first. Get your bank running at 2% ROA and then go pay somebody 2%. Then it's not near as bad. We ought to limit dilution to six months or a year max. There will not be any dilution past that. That is why these deals get sold off, right? They get sold off because they do not work. They just do not work.
The bankers make money, and the CEO gets more money. It's just frustrating as somebody operating in this environment to be kind of we're not really a lone voice. I visited with FirstBank out of Tennessee a while ago. Chris Holmes runs a really good bank. I mean, he said, "Nobody cares about the shareholders." I said, "It's what it looks like." He runs a good bank, right? I just wish the bankers would improve more before we go off and do an M&A deal.
Agreed. Agreed. Johnny, thank you for being here. Donna, thank you for being here. We appreciate you guys coming to Nashville, being part of the event, and look forward to seeing your announcement in December. Sounds good.
You bet. Thank you. Appreciate it.